


A Feast for Solstice

by SemperIntrepida



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Mostly Fluff, Pre-Canon, let's call this pre-elegiad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21943903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SemperIntrepida/pseuds/SemperIntrepida
Summary: In which all Kassandra wants for Solstice is a good party but ends up watching a five-year-old Phoibe instead.
Relationships: Kassandra & Phoibe (Assassin's Creed)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	A Feast for Solstice

Playing babysitter was the opposite of what Kassandra wanted to be doing on Solstice, and yet here Markos was, asking her to watch Phoibe while he ran off to do gods knew what. She looked at the little girl playing in the dust at their feet with rising irritation.

"Kassandra, please. I need to get that shipment from Kausos tonight or it'll be both our heads."

Why couldn't it just be _his_ head for once? She shook her head in defeat. "Fine."

"I'll make it up to you, friend, I will."

She waved him off dismissively. All she wanted for Solstice was to get drunk and find someone beautiful to sleep with. The festival of the longest night brought all the women on the island out to celebrate the harvest and Dionysos, their voices lifting in song, their lithe bodies swaying with the drums... but she wouldn't be there to enjoy it, not this year.

She sighed, then crouched down next to Phoibe. "Hey, you."

The girl gave her a shy smile. "Hey, Kassandra."

"Looks like it's just you and me today."

"Okay." Phoibe poked at the dirt with the stick in her hand, then said warily, "What do you want to do?"

Already wary. Phoibe hadn't even been on the island half a year. "Well, it's Solstice," Kassandra said, putting on a grin. "I'm sure we'll come up with something." She patted the girl's shoulder and stood up. "Let's see what we can find in Sami."

Phoibe followed along behind her as they wandered through the market. Kassandra had scratched together a bit of drachmae, intending to use it for her wine fund at the festival. With the coins in her pouch, and the half a goat she had hanging back at home, they'd eat well tonight at least.

She stretched the drachmae far enough to turn it into a loaf of bread, some apples, a small flask of wine, even a pomegranate and a bit of honeycomb. And when they reached the other side of the market, where the road led away to Mount Ainos, she felt a tug at her belt and saw Phoibe offering up a nutcake.

"Where'd you get that?"

"I borrowed it."

"You 'borrowed' it." She stifled a grin, then glanced around, looking for any angry merchants. The road only held travelers headed to Sami for the festival.

"It's wrong, I know." Small shoulders slumped.

Kassandra shrugged. "The nutcake, maybe. But survival isn't. A knack for borrowing might come in handy."

When they reached the dilapidated house Kassandra called home, she sent Phoibe off to gather palm fronds while she set to digging a large pit away from the front stoop and next to a crumbling stone wall. If she was going to feast at home on Solstice, she'd do it right.

Phoibe set a large pile of fronds near the pit and watched Kassandra dig in rapt fascination. "Can I help?"

"Yeah, find me some rocks like this one." She nudged a flat stone.

Once the pit was deep enough, they lined the bottom with the flat stones and Kassandra built a fire upon them. She wrapped the goat in the palm fronds as the fire burned down to embers, and then she covered the coals with a layer of sand before placing the meat on top of it and burying the whole thing under still more sand. She built one more fire on top of it all, and settled back against the wall to wait. It wasn't long until sunset, and while the day had been warm, it would get cold in the dark.

Kassandra expected boredom to visit her then, but Phoibe began gathering sticks of various sizes and sticking them into the dirt, and she couldn't help but watch as Phoibe played with them, reenacting battles between soldiers and pirates and heroes.

Eventually, Phoibe was surrounded by a fallen army of sticks. After surveying the scene, she grabbed two sticks in each hand, one smaller, and one larger. She shook the smaller stick at the larger, and said, "Gimmie all your money."

The larger stick waved around. "No! It's my money. I'm keeping it!" Phoibe had pitched her voice suspiciously lower.

"You'll pay, girl." Small stick hit the larger.

"Ouch! You hurt my hand!"

Phoibe shook the smaller stick again and gave an evil laugh.

She brought the larger stick close to the smaller. "I really don't like you! Have a stab." Then the larger stick clobbered the smaller one to the ground. "Now gimmie _your_ money."

Kassandra couldn't hold back her laughter any longer. That wasn't exactly how her encounter with the bandit had gone, but good enough for the theatre.

Phoibe dropped the sticks as if caught, but Kassandra began to clap in appreciation. "Come here."

The girl settled in beside her.

"Did Markos tell you what happened?"

Phoibe nodded. Then she asked, "How's your owie?"

Kassandra reflexively rubbed her right hand with her left, feeling the raised scar that ran across the back of her hand in a stark red line. Her skin may have healed, but her ring and little fingers still remained worryingly numb. All her grip strength when holding her spear came from those two fingers. If they didn't heal right...

But Phoibe didn't need to know all this. "Much better," she said.

"Can I see it?"

Kassandra knew the question for what it was, and opened her arms so the girl could crawl into her lap. Small fingers explored her hand, tracing the scar and poking at the callouses on her palm.

"Rough," Phoibe declared.

"Yeah."

"Will mine get like that?"

"Maybe. Depends on what trade you take up."

"I'm gonna heal people with my hands." She tugged Kassandra's hand closer and cupped it between her own.

"That would be nice of you."

Phoibe giggled and dug deeper into Kassandra's lap, her head resting against Kassandra's chest. "You're nice."

Was she? Kassandra wasn't sure. She had rarely been wielded for anything good.

Phoibe lay silently in her lap as the fire burned down, and for a while Kassandra thought she might have fallen asleep. She closed her eyes, enjoying the fire's warmth, and, she admitted to herself, Phoibe's contented closeness. After a while, Phoibe stirred, and said "Sorry," so quietly Kassandra almost missed hearing it.

"For what?"

"You didn't... You didn't want to be with me today."

Kassandra cursed herself silently. She'd have to remember to watch herself around Phoibe in the future, because even a five-year-old could understand the happenings around them, and they rarely missed anything important.

She used a finger to tilt Phoibe's chin up to look at her. "Listen. I did have something else I wanted to do, but I'm here with you now. And I'm glad to be."

Phoibe's arms wrapped around her.

"I'm sorry I made you feel like you weren't welcome."

"You still made me a feast." Phoibe, finding some good left in her.

She smiled. "Can't be Solstice without a feast." The smell of roasting meat made her stomach rumble. "And I think it might be ready." She lifted herself to her feet and took Phoibe along for the ride.

Phoibe let out an excited howl as she swooped through the air. "Yes!"

Solstice was here.


End file.
